Phil SumblerIt was with interest last night that we read about a takeover at Wigan that has a double Swansea connection in a sports lawyer and former manager and player Roberto Martinez.
Roberto’s links with Wigan are well known – he was a player there before he joined the Swans and of course he departed these shores in the summer of 2009 to take over as their manager, delivering both an FA Cup win and relegation from the Premier League in the same season.
SOURCE: TIME BULLETIN 2nd October 2020 (Shane T Foster)
Now it looks like he is involved in pulling together a consortium to take over the League One club who were relegated from the Championship last time around thanks to a twelve point deduction after being placed into administration by their new owners.
It is not happy times at the DW Stadium and a second Swansea connection was revealed by Time Bulletin to be involved and that is sports lawyer Chris Farnell who was in the middle of the sale of the Swans to our current American owners back in 2016.
The publication declares Farnell to have a “an abysmal track record in football” and goes onto say that it leaves Wigan fans fearing the worst. It is clear that the writer of the article has little time for the lawyer with the paragraph below highlighting other incidents with football takeovers: 
The author goes onto add claims of domestic issues and bullying claims from former Swans director Steve Penney before stating that Farnell would claim the fit and proper test so has enlisted Martinez for support in a way to deceive both the EFL and the club describing Roberto as “a successful credible football manager, close sources say that he is incredibly shrewd in business and can be cut-throat.”
The whole article is clearly very critical of the whole takeover under the headline “Nightmare Wigan Athletic Takeover” and certainly raised a few eyebrows with us when we read it.
Quotes in this article are taken from the original article which appeared in Time Bulletin on 2nd October (Source: article here) – the views are not representative of Planet Swans or our writing team
